Interview with Dr. Charles Greer

Program Driver

Dr. Charles Greer, Biotechnology Research Institute, Montreal

“What we are trying to do is use microorganisms to degrade organic pollutants,” says Dr. Charles Greer, who runs an environmental microbiology laboratory at the National Research Council of Canada’s Biotechnology Research Institute (NRC-BRI) in Montreal.

“With biodegredation, we are trying to clean up man’s indiscriminate pollution using microorganisms. We want to identify and profile the microorganisms that are naturally there. We are not inventing anything. From a microbial point of view, we are only familiar with about 1% of what is actually out there.”

Dr. Greer is the program leader of “A Genomics-Based Approach to Enhancing Bioremediation through Microbial Identification and Community Profiling,” one of the eight Phase II programs undertaken by NRC’s Genomics and Health Initiative. Phase I of this initiative was launched in 1999, with the aim of encouraging NRC’s biotechnology institutes to work together and compete for projects. Phase II got underway in 2002. NRC is Canada’s premier research organization. NRC-BRI is the largest biotechnology R&D; center in Canada, with over 800 regular personnel, guest workers, students and PDFs and industry scientists.

Dr. Greer is concerned about the accidental and deliberate release of chemicals into the environment, and their effect on long-term human and ecosystem health, and particularly on the quality of drinking water resources. His laboratory has a distinguished track record of using taxonomic and catabolic gene probes to address applied problems in environmental microbiology. In fact, the methods he advocates are environmentally friendly. These methods involve, for example, the mobilization of microscopic prokaryotic organisms that thrive in extremes of heat or cold, and are good at breaking down various toxic chemicals. Moreover, his program is promoting the use of enzymes and microbial consortia to clean up industrial processes that currently pollute.

“Bioremediation is the use of biological systems to restore contaminated sites which could include air, soil and water,” says Dr. Greer. “We are mainly concerned with soil. We would like to use microorganisms that can remove toxic pollutants from the soil. These microorganisms are often already present in the soil. The presence of pollution activates the microorganisms, which thrive while consuming the material; once the pollution is broken down, the microorganisms return to a normal level. Bacteria and fungi in the soil help to recycle many man-made pollutants.”

“A Genomic-Based Approach to Enhancing Bioremediation through Microbial Identification and Community Profiling” is applying high throughout genomic techniques such as DNA sequencing, PCR amplification, micro array screening and bioinformatics databases, to identify suitable microorganisms. According to Dr. Greer, “We are looking at the entire genomic content of a gram of soil, rather than the genome of a particular organisms. We want to investigate the potential of whole communities of microorganisms and find which ones could help with remediation.”

The programs aims to assist industry and government departments to leverage R&D; spending and remediation efforts into a useful knowledge, and to screen bioactive ingredients that could be used in environmentally friendly industrial processes. According to Dr. Greer, microarrays for the detection of pathogens and target genes will also be developed by the program, as well as microarrays for profiling complex natural and stressed microbial communities.

Back to A Genomics-Based Approach to Enhancing Bioremediation through Microbial Identification and Community Profiling